Past Writings: Samantha Power on Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq

Samantha Power, senior director of multilateral affairs with the U.S. National Security Council and U.S. President Barack Obama’s nominee as ambassador to the United Nations, looks on as Obama makes the announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, June 5, 2013.

Samantha Power is President Barack Obama’s pick to succeed Susan Rice as the ambassador to the United Nations. The Dublin native and longtime Obama adviser is a former journalist, Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author for a book on genocide. Over the years, she has earned a reputation for being a passionate human rights advocate and highly outspoken political aide (she resigned from the Obama campaign in 2008 after calling then-Obama rival Hillary Clinton a “monster”). Here is a sampling of Ms. Power’s writings, on topics including Sudan, Rwanda and the war in Iraq.

“As the terror in Rwanda had unfolded, Clinton had shown virtually no interest in stopping the genocide, and his Administration had stood by as the death toll rose into the hundreds of thousands. Why did the United States not do more for the Rwandans at the time of the killings? Did the President really not know about the genocide, as his marginalia suggested?… So far people have explained the U.S. failure to respond to the Rwandan genocide by claiming that the United States didn’t know what was happening, that it knew but didn’t care, or that regardless of what it knew there was nothing useful to be done. The account that follows is based on a three-year investigation involving sixty interviews with senior, mid-level, and junior State Department, Defense Department, and National Security Council officials who helped to shape or inform U.S. policy… It reveals that the U.S. government knew enough about the genocide early on to save lives, but passed up countless opportunities to intervene.”

“In March of 1998, on a visit to Rwanda, President Clinton issued what would later be known as the ‘Clinton apology,’ which was actually a carefully hedged acknowledgment. He spoke to the crowd assembled on the tarmac at Kigali Airport: ‘We come here today partly in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred’ in Rwanda. This implied that the United States had done a good deal but not quite enough. In reality the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term ‘genocide,’ for fear of being obliged to act. The United States in fact did virtually nothing ‘to try to limit what occurred.’ Indeed, staying out of Rwanda was an explicit U.S. policy objective.”

“Outside powers cannot wait for confirmation of genocide before they act. In 1994 the Clinton administration spent more time maneuvering to avoid using the term ‘genocide’ than it did using its resources to save lives. In May 1994, an internal Pentagon memo warned against using the term ‘genocide’ because it could commit the United States ”to actually do something.” In the case of Sudan, American officials need not focus on whether the killings meet the definition of genocide set by the 1948 Genocide Convention; they should focus instead on trying to stop them.”

“President Clinton has said that one of the greatest mistakes of his presidency was not doing more to prevent the Rwandan genocide. When he visited Rwanda in 1998, he tried to explain America’s failure to respond: ‘It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.’ Today, roughly 1,000 miles north of Rwanda, tens of thousands of Africans are herded onto death marches, and Western leaders are again sitting in offices. How sad it is that it doesn’t even seem strange.”

“The U.S. use of the G word has done little more than set off a new round of bureaucratic shuffling. Some who recall the Holocaust and Rwanda don’t believe Darfur measures up. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has said he will appoint a commission to investigate the charges. European ministers, who have been reluctant even to acknowledge ethnic cleansing, are scrambling to draft legal briefs. The Arab League and Sudan have scoffed at the U.S. claim, charging Bush with having an anti-Islamic agenda. Meanwhile, the killings, rapes and torchings continue.

“The only hope for peace is an international protection force. But so far, only Nigeria, Tanzania and Rwanda have offered troops, and the proposed force of 4,000 won’t deter attacks unless the soldiers are equipped and paid for by the major powers, are given a mandate to protect civilians and are eventually reinforced by 10,000 additional troops from other nations. Yet amid all the talk of oil embargoes, travel bans and asset freezes, no statesman–not Powell and not Annan–has attempted to rally the money, troops and political cooperation needed for such a force. Bush Administration officials seem to feel that, having used the G word, they have done their part. But the sin of past Presidents is not that they failed to use the word but that then, as now, they failed to stop the crime.”

“Ever since the Bush administration embarked upon its Iraq venture, it has taken a strict, inflexible line on the past: Forget about it.

… The administration’s desire to avoid drawing attention to Iraq is not surprising. Children fib to cover their tracks; Catholic bishops juggle their priests to do so; and corporate executives shift the focus to next year’s profit forecasts to avoid this year’s bottom line. It is the rare individual in public life who acknowledges responsibility for error without being forced to do so — John F. Kennedy on the Bay of Pigs and Dwight Eisenhower in anticipation of an unsuccessful Normandy landing are two examples that come to mind. But even more remarkable than the administration’s convenient amnesia these last two years has been the seeming reluctance of foreign policy veterans in the Democratic Party to challenge it. Democratic critics of the administration, for the most part, have been cowed into making either ‘constructive,’ forward-looking comments or none at all.”

“The Republican domestic agenda may also influence voters’ perceptions about national security. The party that opposes strict gun control laws, seeks to crack down on illegal immigrants, wages a ‘war’ on drugs, extols the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ approach to criminal sentencing, and has few qualms about capital punishment has been seen as ‘tougher,’ regardless of the effectiveness of these policies. This faith in Republican toughness has had profound electoral consequences. Since 1968, with the single exception of the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Americans have chosen Republican presidents in times of perceived danger and Democrats in times of relative calm.

…

“Bush’s stated goals were to strengthen the US military, bring stability to Iraq and Afghanistan, combat terrorism, prevent rogue states and militants from acquiring nuclear weapons, and promote democracy around the world. In each case, two terms of Republican rule have been disastrous for US national security. The question is: Have American voters noticed?

…

“For the first time in sixteen years, the Democrats in 2008 could end up in control of the House, Senate, and White House. This could enable them to scale back the ballooning budget deficit, put in place a universal health care plan, move the country along the path to energy independence, and commit the United States to combating climate change. Although few have focused on this, the Democratic Party today is also in a strong position to show that it will be more reliable in keeping Americans safe during the twenty-first century. If the party succeeds in doing this, it will not only wake up the United States and the world from a long eight-year nightmare; it will also lay to rest the enduring myth that strong and wrong is preferable to smart and right.”

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